Exhibit at Greater Plymouth Community Center focuses on emergency responders

By M. ENGLISH, 21st Century Media News Service

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

PLYMOUTH — The Pulitzer Prize-winning photos on display at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center through Dec. 31 are compelling reminders of photography’s emotional muscle.

The digital homage to local emergency responders recently mounted at Greater Plymouth Community Center similarly highlights the incalculable service rendered by local first responders. The exhibit — “911: What is your Emergency” — is the work of Plymouth Meeting’s Emily Thomas and debuted with the dedication of Plymouth Township’s new Service and Devotion Monument Nov. 9.

Thomas’s 20-portrait series — composed of dramatic 16-by-24-inch color prints — began as the photography major’s senior thesis at Cazenovia College in upstate New York. But according to the May 2013 Cazenovia grad, her photographic “essay” is rooted a lot closer to home.

“My brother, my dad and myself all belong to Plymouth Fire Company,” Thomas says. “My brother is a lieutenant and firefighter; my dad is a lieutenant and treasurer with the fire police; and I do fire photography … and belong to Plymouth’s website committee.

“The photos in the [display] encompass the men and women of the Plymouth and Harmonville fire companies, Plymouth Ambulance and the Plymouth Police Department, but my family’s involvement at Plymouth [Fire Company] and the dominance of fire and different emergency scenarios for as long as I can remember is where it all started.

“I’d been taking pictures of all this, but [typically] without any faces. With my thesis project, I decided it was time to put faces to the images. So I decided to do portraits of these people in their everyday activities to bring a point to the fact that although people think of them as heroes, they’re humans. Individuals. That was my goal — to humanize these men and women who serve all of us so brilliantly with their quick and selfless actions on our behalf.”

Thomas reasoned “having actual stories to go with the images would make them even more powerful.”

“So, I asked each person [to] write something about their worst day on the job … to correlate with the images,” she continues. “My idea was, I wanted anyone who looked at these photographs to get a feel for what these people go through. These people are bled on and vomited on and go through so much. But I don’t think most people actually think about what happens while they’re out there … how much of themselves they give, over and over again.”

Thomas limited her subjects to veteran responders.

“I wanted men and women with at least five to seven years of experience,” she says. “I didn’t want any rookies … any fresh eyes. And I also needed people who were willing to tell their stories. But once I started, the whole thing took on a life of its own. And as I started to make contacts, it became like a series of inside doors … doors within doors …t hat led to one another.”

In a bittersweet twist, the Thomas compilation includes an informal photo of slain Plymouth police Officer Brad Fox, taken mere months before his death and paired with Plymouth police Chief Joseph Lawrence’s reflections about the late officer’s last day on the job.

“[I] was hoping the next time I was able to come home from school, I would be able to photograph him in the same lighting as everyone else,” Thomas recalls. “Unfortunately, that did not happen … so sad and ironic when you think about the way these essays revolve around loss and death and hardship.”

That said, she adds, her main focus “is on all of these men and women …”

“We shouldn’t need something tragic to happen for us to realize how fortunate we are to have such well-trained men and women there for us every single moment,” Thomas notes in her thesis statement. “Our first responders courageously drive into unique situations every day to help people in any imaginable condition. Their fast and brilliant decisions help save our families and protect our homes.”

Thomas, 22, has been taking photos since she received “a very basic” camera as a gift when she was 10.

“I fell in love with it,” she remembers and credits mom Karen with her earliest creative sense.

“My mother went to Textile, which is now Philadelphia University, and majored in textile design,” she explains. “When I was little, I used to go into her sewing room … and look at the different color combinations in the fabrics she was using. I believe those influences played a role in how I choose the key color to emphasize in my work.”

Thomas shot pictures through her years at Philadelphia’s Little Flower High School, completed internships at WPVI-TV and for a wedding photographer during college and has since contributed work to a number of Plymouth Township newsletters. As a coach for the soccer team at her elementary school alma mater, Plymouth Meeting’s former Epiphany of Our Lord now Holy Rosary Regional Catholic School, Thomas has also been known to take a sports-related picture or two. She is currently photo editor at Cigars International in Bethlehem.